18. With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts thro' the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,

19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her golden breast,

20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying Empire is no more! and now the lion and the wolf shall cease.

Chorus

Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn no longer, in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy! Nor his accepted brethren -- whom, tyrant, he calls free -- lay the bound or build the roof! Nor pale Religion's lechery call that Virginity that wishes but acts not!

For everything that lives is Holy!

The protagonist of the poem, whom we first meet in the form of a "new-born terror," is elsewhere called "Orc" by Blake. Orc, who sometimes appears as a serpent ("Orc" means "hell" in Latin), is an avatar of revolution, an enemy of law and tradition, and a prophet of imaginative renewal and individual freedom. These, for Blake, are all more or less good things, but Orc is in later works recognized as somewhat limited; the spirit of rebellion is to a certain extent reactive, as it gets its meaning, at least in part, from that which it opposes. This, however, doesn't diminish the sublime thrill of reading Blake's magnificent account of Orc stamping the tablets of the law to dust; with Blake, as with MES, there is usually a twist of irony in the anthems, but the surface read is always accomodating if one wants to pump one's fist. Orc's primary antagonist is Urizen, who, in part, symbolizes rationalism and arid legalism.

2. Or "bad Blake." Blake was thought by many of his contemporaries to be mad, although the consensus now is that he was sane. According to William Wordsworth, "There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott." In the present age, however, there are few, if any, scholars who think that Blake was mad, and although he was derided and neglected in his lifetime, and in fact lived in extreme poverty ("he was broke"), he is now universally considered to be a major poet.

3. There is a town called Chepstow in Wales, 110 miles west of London. There is, however, both a Chepstow Road and a Chepstow Place in London, as well as Chepstow Villas in the Notting Hill section of town, none of which are associated with Blake as far as I can make out.

Leon points out, however, that there is a Chepstow Way in Peckham. Peckham is where Blake had his first vision (Londonist):

"In 1765 at the age of 8, William Blake saw his first vision while walking on Peckham Rye. 'A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.' In collaboration with the Blake Society and the Forestry Commission, an oak sapling was saved from the eroding margins of England and transplanted to Peckham Rye as an invitation to future generations of Peckham Angels."

5. Although Blake professed to be a Christian, he belonged to no denomination and displayed an antinomian bent in his writings, most pronouncedly in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," which is alluded to here. The rough mix has MES saying, "What can an indigenous man do except look up, look up..."

6. Nebuchadnezzar was the ruler of the Babylonian Empire who sent the Jews into exile. In Blake's mythos, which draws heavily on the Bible, he is a symbol the bestial side of human nature, bereft of imagination. Blake famously painted Nebuchadnezzar on all fours, with a vacant and miserable expression; in the Bible, he is said to have gone mad and lived like an animal in the wilderness for seven years, and to have survived by eating grass.

7. The passage this is derived from would certainly be considered racist today, although Blake, who was no anti-semite and who vehemently opposed slavery, was not consciously a racist, and wouldn't have been considered one by the standards of his time and place: "O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance! O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine. O African! black African! Go, wingèd thought, widen his forehead!" (see note 1). Note that, although Blake repeats what are now considered to be unacceptable stereotypes, the "Jew" and the "Black African" are understood to participate in the higher, imaginative form of humanity that Blake is always concerned with restoring; thus, whatever else can be said about it, Blake's conception is of a fallen nature, and thus is not "essentialist," to use contemporary jargon. The take included on the bonus disk of The Unutterable contains the lines: "O citizen of London, he thought: enlarge thy countenance! He wrote: the black African wind from whither his forehead expanded, the fiery limbs and the flaming hair; and Blake went down the hill in Chepstow [into the north?]." Here the original is revised so that it is seemingly the African wind that expands the countenance of the Londoner or, perhaps, the "wind-hairs" (itself a pretty weird revision) emanate from Orc's forehead and Africa is out of the picture. For whatever reason, in any case, the phrase "black African" does not appear at all in the version on The Unutterable.

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Comments (9)

1.Iain McCulloch | 29/05/2014

I've always thought that the WB could stand for both William Blake and William Burroughs (seeing as how the MES delivery on this track appears to be clearly inspired by Burroughs' many spoken word recitals set to music)

2.bzfgt | 15/06/2014

That's an interesting claim. I don't see anything in the lyrics to make one think of Burroughs, but you may be right about the delivery--I haven't heard a lot of Burroughs' recordings, so I don't feel qualified to say, but I'll look into it at some point.

3.Tom | 04/12/2016

Re: Chepstow... This might a bit tenuous, but Colin Wilson (who MES admired, and even referenced in 'Deer Park' - "this is where C Wilson wrote Ritual in the Dark") lived in Chepstow Villas in Notting Hill when he was writing both Ritual and his first published book 'The Outsider'. Wilson was equally obsessed with William Blake, devoting a lot of space in The Outsider (and his other books) to him, so maybe 'Down the (Notting) hill, in Chepstow' is some vague reference to Wilson. Maybe Wilson's book was how MES got into Blake in the first place?

4.Leon | 07/07/2017

Chepstow Way is in Peckham, where Blake saw angels

5.Paul Go | 01/12/2018

Angels eh. would that have anything to do with an oke tree?

6.Paul Go | 02/12/2018

I wouldn't say there was anything racist. Jews don't like people accusing Israel of bad things, doesn't mean the accusations are wrong. Avoiding Jews counting money is like avoiding black slavery because blacks find it unpalatable. My opinion, not the site's, etc. All very confusing this race/religion/nation thing. Talking about Jews can be a bit of a tongue twister.

'winged' rather than 'wind'? There's such a subtle difference in the sound, the Blake word would seem a safer option.

7.Paul Go | 06/12/2018

Isn't it "You've heard of bad bad Blake"? and 'It's on forever'.
Still 'winged-hairs'. Wind doesn't appear in the poem, where as 'winged thought' does.
if only one word up there, I would put 'oak' up as the lyric and mention the song in the footnote. Even though this sort of contradicts what I said in B#, this is a special case, as a straight pun based on sound is both words at once. Ideally you have both words up.

How did you work out 'Nebuchadnezzar'? I wouldn't have know how to say it. Not really clear on how it connects to 'merchant' and oils and 'times like these'? Also, any thoughts about 'Rome didn't matter or come off'?

The Testa Rossa version seems to say "You heard about bad Blake." I think this does seem like it could be that or "Bad bad Blake." In this case I don't think it's the same vocal take although they usually are. "Mad Blake" fits best semantically...I need to check a few more times.

For now I have "bad Blake" as the variant in the note, I can't quite decide yet but the Testa Rossa thing is a powerful reason to consider changing it. I didn't listen to the whole thing this time, it's possible it is the same vocal (withiout "It's on forever" though) and it just sounds different to me because of the instrumental track...I'd like a few more people to listen and see what is heard.